


player

by sugarvixx



Category: VIXX
Genre: Gen, creepy man, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25768342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarvixx/pseuds/sugarvixx
Summary: “Nothing really scares me these days, give me the worst you have,” the owner thought for a second before ducking under the counter. “I think I have one,” he said, taking something out from the box.
Kudos: 1





	player

**Author's Note:**

> hi, this work is in the line-up for my spooktober series project. however, today's heartbreaking news is too much for me and I don't feel motivated to finish what I started. therefore, I am posting whatever readable works I have in the draft unbeta'd. enjoy :)

“Nothing really scares me these days, give me the worst you have,” the owner thought for a second before ducking under the counter. “I think I have one,” he said, taking something out from the box.

“I found it in the box mixed together with my other stocks but there’s only one copy of this. I thought it was because of a delivery mistake but they said I don’t have to return it. The reviews said this game is real scary, but I never tried. Interested?” he could see the cashier hesitated a bit but his face looked somewhat relieved when he said he’ll have it.

\--

Player. Jaehwan flips the casing to look at the game synopsis only to find a single word. Survive. The box art however does look a bit peculiar, it’s a fully pitch black background with white lettering for the title at the bottom edge. People might say that it’s a waste of space and black ink for printing but Jaehwan thinks the cover was purposely coloured black because when it’s under the plastic cover layer, it acts like a mirror and reflects the face of whoever is holding the box, with ‘Player’ labelled under their faces. Jaehwan honestly believes that it’s a neat trick.

Jaehwan is curious as to why didn’t he know about this video game earlier? And it’s stressing him out too when he couldn’t find any remarkable reviews regarding it. All he could find is a thread from an online forum -- after a whole day digging around -- with comments like ‘this shit scary as fuck, i’m never playing it again,’ ‘burned it after a single play, literal nightmare’ Jaehwan thinks they are the same reviews the shop owner saw before too. He’s a bit frustrated but he is honestly excited to play.

“Is it really that scary?”

He sits down, puts the CD in the console and waits for it to load.

After a few minutes, the game’s main menu appears on the screen. Jaehwan chooses ‘START’ while shoving a handful of cheeseballs he grabbed from the bowl he prepared earlier into his mouth.

The game starts with the male character standing in the middle of a room. Since it’s in third-person perspective, he can only see the character’s back and not his face. He moves his character around, rotating the left stick while pressing the different action buttons. He observes his character jumping around, opening the storage menu, testing the control.

After a full hour of randomly exploring the world in the game, communicating with the NPCs, clicking on whatever stuff he found, he figures out the gameplay and the objectives of the game.

“Ah, okay, okay, okay,” he muttered as a habit whenever he understood something new.

The overall gameplay is mainly about the main character who is trapped in an unknown world that is somewhat similar to the real world and he has to find ways to escape while fighting these scary, faceless, flesh eating, human-like monsters. The world is washed in blue, gloomy lighting. Based on the stories he gathers from the people around, he has to listen to this particular creepy whistle from the background as that would signal that the monsters are awake. The monsters will stop coming out after a while and the process will repeat throughout the game. It has multiple endings and different choices will result in different endings. 

One thing Jaehwan notices with the game is that whenever he is about to make a decision, a text box will pop out and it reads ‘Are you sure? Make your best decision’ with a yes and no option. Not thinking much about it, he clicks yes like how he’d play other games.

His first sitting with the game earns him the first ending which is he safely escaped with no harm, and the world called him their hero.

Saving the game, he stretches and glances at the clock on the wall. “Oh, It’s almost midnight,” he thought and he turned the game off, heading to the kitchen to have a late dinner of instant noodles and getting ready to bed. Although in all honesty, all he’s going to do would be spending another 4 to 5 hours scrolling through Twitter in bed instead of sleeping.

The next morning, Jaehwan is getting ready for his usual morning jog when he notices a gift basket of multiple types of fruit at his front door. He crouches down to read the card in the basket. It has no sender and there’s a typed “To our hero” on it.

“Huh,” he mused. Thinking who on earth would send him this gift and then he’s remembered the game he played yesterday. A pang of chills hit him for a short moment but then he shrugged it off. “Nah, no way,” maybe the sender had the wrong house. So he just leaves the basket outside.

Tonight, he wants to play ‘Player’ again. He’s motivated to explore all the different endings. This time, he managed to escape as well but by playing dirty and sacrificing the innocent civilians, killing them to survive and escape. At the ending credit, a text box pops out telling him that he has unlocked a hidden ending.

Excited, he continues playing to look for the hidden ending. It is the same moving around, fighting monsters, and then he notices a new monster with a red glimmery shadow around it. He aims to shoot the monster but the bullet seems to pass through it, not affecting the monster at all. He follows the monster and walks towards an unfamiliar section at the other side of the map. His energy almost depleted when the monster stopped, pointing towards the uncovered manhole near its feet. He drinks the energy drink to get the extra boost of energy before hopping into the manhole. Once he lands, the screen turns black and gets into the story scene screen. Jaehwan almost jumps in his seat when a heavily pixelated and unrecognizable figure pops out along with the dialogue box which reads total nonsense, weird, stylized characters, as if someone keyboard-smashed instead of writing the actual dialogue, some lines are too long it breaks the dialogue box and extends off the screen. It looks so out of place, the colour, the graphic, and oh the bgm, the background music is a high-pitched screeching that Jaehwan has never heard from the game before. It is just too disturbing that Jaehwan rushes to turn on the lights of his room to at least calm himself down. He tries to exit the game but everything is unresponsive. The horror continues for a few minutes before it turns silent and the screen blacks out again. Only to bring his character back to the mysterious street. This time, the manhole is covered and there’s a small yellow arrow floating on top of the monster’s head indicating that it is now an interactive NPC.

He moves closer towards it and the monster’s dialogue box pops out at the bottom of the screen.

I found you, Jaehwan. Let’s be friends. Me… You… Friends...

Jaehwan freaks out and immediately pulls the plug off the power socket forcing the game console to shut down. Saved or not be damned. He feels his heart thundering in his chest. This one creeps him out real good. At first he is about to lose himself when he sees his name but he remembers that some newly released games nowadays have that technology to dig through the player’s device and find out their name or at least the name they put as their device’s name and game creators used that to add extra scare factors like this one popular game called Doki-Doki Literature Club. Jaehwan remembers he was scared shitless when playing that one too so he sits back down and takes a deep breath.

“Whew, that was scary,”

He fishes out for his phone and quickly searches for ‘cute kitties’ and scrolls through the images from the results. He needs an instant fix. 

\--

After a good 2 hours of repairing his mental damage from the horror by watching a random sitcom on the tv, he managed to get over it and sleep as if nothing happened. However, he’s reminded of it again in the morning while having his breakfast.

He turns the game back on, intending to resume the game. He genuinely thinks he would lose his progress due to his aggressive forceful shutdown last night. But to his surprise, the game starts up at the exact same street only this time, he’s alone.

And the world is yellow. It’s not that dark, depressing, gloomy blue-ish colour anymore. It’s a sunny, bright yellow version of the same world. “Oh, this may be the hidden ending!” thinking that he may have defeated the final boss and gets the nice version of the world. He explores the world again, going into shops, bumping into different people, everyone seems happy and enjoying themselves. No creepy whistles, just normal world. 

He pauses the game for a while to refill his snack bowl. When he gets back, he notices a blurred shadow at the corner of the screen. When he restarts, the shadow gets clearer and he sees a mysterious man he never sees before, in a black suit. His face is a little bit too round and unnaturally white. Not skin colour white, but white paint kind of white, smiling from ear to ear (literally). What gets him is that man is not looking at his character in the game. But at him. The man is looking at him. He tries to ignore the creepy character at first, but when he notices that the character is always there in the background, following him wherever he’s going in the game, still directly looking at him. The man is even in the story scenes! This one time Jaehwan walks his character towards the creepy man, he disappears and reappears a few feet away. Always in the background.

“Ok, that’s it, I’m done,” a break from this game seems nice. Now only he feels the reviews of this game with his whole being. It is indeed creepy as hell.

He saves the game, takes it out from the console and keeps it in its case, throwing it into his drawer.

“Hey, Sanghyuk, you free tonight?”

\--

Jaehwan thought maybe going out and hang out with Sanghyuk will take his mind off the stupid game. He is busy talking about this new anime released this week when he sensed Sanghyuk looking uncomfortable and fidgety.

Taking a bite off his fries, he raises his eyebrows pointedly at Sanghyuk “you good?”

“Hey, I’m going to take your picture. Just act normal,” Sanghyuk said before he takes out his phone and snaps a few pictures of Jaehwan. He looks down and seems to be typing something. Jaehwan doesn’t get to ask him when he feels the vibration of his phone in his pocket.

He reads the message from Sanghyuk.

keep ur phone under d table

[photo]

this creepy ass man has been looking at you this whole time dude

Jaehwan looks at the photo of himself in front of the glass wall of the McDonalds they are in, across the wall is just an empty park swallowed in the darkness of the night and he sees him. He sees the weird man from the game, his white face is a giveaway. If it’s not because of the trees, it would have been obvious but the man did a good job staying hidden, staring at him from the shadows, half of his body hidden behind the tall bushes, a few feet away from them.

Smiling, looking directly at him.


End file.
